“Only needs 10 pages changing”: Audrey Hepburn’s only R-rated movie and why she wanted to quit
Even though it was only introduced in 1968, the year after she’d effectively retired as a full-time actor, Audrey Hepburn is still one of the stars least likely to appear in an R-rated movie.
Her image wasn’t one associated with the sort of content that would ban certain sections of the audience from watching her onscreen, and even the closest she came to the horror genre, the nerve-shredding Wait Until Dark, was granted a PG certificate for its home video release and television airings.
Hepburn’s persona is so at odds with everything associated with R-rated cinema, namely, sex, nudity, foul language, excessive violence, and all the rest, that it’s a surprise she even made one of them, considering she spent her career as a beacon of clean-cut Hollywood goodness and one of its most popular stars.
And yet, in one of her infrequent comebacks, the Academy Award-winning icon crossed that Rubicon. Directed by Dr No, Thunderball, and From Russia with Love‘s Terence Young, the thriller starred Hepburn as a pharmaceutical heiress marked for death by her own family, but that wasn’t what affected her.
Instead, an additional subplot about a serial killer traversing Europe and killing women in snuff films got under her skin, and she didn’t even realise it was part of the narrative until midway through production. Either she didn’t read the script, or it was added when she’d already signed on, because it’s certainly odd that the top-billed star of a picture remained completely oblivious to one of its most important elements.
As her second marriage to Andrea Dotti went through hard times, eventually dissolving in 1982, Hepburn opted to throw herself back into work. Bloodline was her first role in three years, several actors had already turned it down, and the main character of Elizabeth Roffe had to be rejigged because the 50-year-old was significantly older than the 23-year-old protagonist of Sidney Sheldon’s source novel.
“I never gave a thought to the question of my age when I was asked to do this film,” Hepburn argued, although the promise of $1.2 million upfront and 10% of the box office receipts would have helped. After Young convinced her that the script “only needs ten pages changing” to accommodate her age, she signed on.
Not that she earned much on the backend when Bloodline flopped in cinemas, and it became such a footnote in the legendary star’s filmography that it wouldn’t make its Blu-ray debut until 2024. Whether or not it had anything to do with her misgivings, it’s interesting that the extended version of the film excised the snuff subplot that gave Hepburn such pause.
The theatrical edition runs for 116 minutes, but even with the majority of the snuff serial killer storyline removed, the extended version that ran on TV was 141 minutes long, which basically proved her point that it was hardly integral to the narrative.
